


won't you spare me over 'till another year

by qualapec



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 14:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1608833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qualapec/pseuds/qualapec
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Alana isn't standing on solid ground and firing a gun requires a steady hand." AU because of current show events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	won't you spare me over 'till another year

I .

Alana wanted to hold his hand, wanted to keep holding it when the shock ran down the wire, wanted it to go through him, through her, through her heart, down her legs, into her feet, into the ground. She wanted it to cut through her numb skin; she wanted him to know she was with him.

He smiled some small sheepish smile and told her he thought of her all the time. (He said he didn’t need a priest, so Alana took his confession instead.) It was the closest they ever came to admitting anything, and it was probably for the best. They’d missed their chance a long time ago.

In the end, Alana let go. She left the prison at 11:30. By all reports, it was over at five after midnight.

II .

Photographs of Will’s body sold on the internet for thirty-thousand dollars. No one admitted to knowing who took them or was able to trace the money. Freddie Lounds was suspected, arrested, and released on lack of evidence.

III .

Will’s family was either dead or had disowned him. Alana had to make the calls to empty houses and full graveyards.

IV.

During the funeral, someone holds a black umbrella over Alana’s head. She listens to the sound of the rain drumming on the nylon to the beat of the sermon, watches the droplets roll off the dark casket, bounce on the bouquet, and her hands are cold. He reaches out to her with his free hand and she catches the faint smell of cardamom and cologne.

“Thank you for helping me pay for this,” Alana says, her voice a thing cracked and stitched back together. “It’s beautiful.”

Steady, grieved, Hannibal looks onwards, eyes locked on the grave. “It was the least I could do, Alana.”

“You already did all you could to help Will.”

Hannibal turns to look at her, surprised, and Alana suddenly can’t remember the last time someone saw her instead of the man she tried (and failed) to save. “Will is beyond our help, Alana. I wanted to give you your chance to say goodbye, which I suppose is my way of saying goodbye myself.”

Afterwards, Hannibal invites her to his home for dinner, and Alana accepts before she realizes she’s not hungry, that her stomach is knotted with grief.

When they step through the door, Alana stops, and feels the world fall out from under her feet. Hannibal is there to steady her, to grab her and hold her until she can stop crying. She doesn’t want his pity or his gentle words, so she kisses him to keep him quiet. After a long moment, he wipes the tears from her eyes and kisses her back. Alana wants to feel something other than pain and dust and constant sickness.

They don’t make it to dinner.

V.

Hannibal stands at the end of the hallway, covered in Jack’s blood, and Alana is a startled doe. She’s frozen and shaking all at once, the handgun quivering in her sweating palms, her breath coming out in ragged gasps as tears fall out of unblinking eyes. This isn’t the man she knows, this isn’t her friend, her grad adviser, the man who she held and didn’t let go of after Will’s funeral. She sees him as he is now – a creature that is horned and gaunt and hungry and will kill her if she doesn’t kill him first.

Understanding is flowing through her, followed closely by hot terror. She now knows that Will died for a sum of tricks and terrible mistakes, his, hers, theirs, with Hannibal at the center of the web, and she regrets spending more time trying to save him then believing him.

Hannibal doesn’t expect her to be able to pull the trigger – she’s not a field agent, she’s never had to fire a gun against anything but a paper target, in a situation without shock or pain or her old friend bearing down on her with a kitchen knife. She understands that even if she does, he doesn’t care. Hannibal has been playing an all-or-nothing game since the beginning and he now has nothing to lose. He stalks towards her, a wolf, a machine, the Ripper on a rampage.

Alana’s bones become steel and she fires.


End file.
